CFTC Grants One-Year Extension to DTCC-SWIFT LEI Order

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC ) has opted to lengthen an order of a joint DTCC-SWIFT utility, which manages and provides legal entity identifiers (LEIs), which will see the groups’ designation extended another year, according to a CFTC statement.

LEIs are identification codes that help enable and foster consistent and accurate identification of all legal entities that are parties to financial transactions, including non-financial institutions. This methodology and provision is required by the CFTC’s swap data recordkeeping and reporting rules – the extension itself is important as it facilitates more time for the global LEI system to become fully operational.

The CFTC originally made DTCC-SWIFT’s initial designation order back on July 23, 2012 for a period of two years. When the order was issued, the CFTC was already participating in an international process to establish a global LEI system resulting in extensions on July 22, 2014 and again on July 17, 2015.

The order itself helps allow registered entities and swap counterparties to comply with the CFTC’s overarching swap data recordkeeping and reporting regulatory regime by using LEIs, as issued by DTCC-SWIFT, as well as a variety of other means. These include other pre-Local Operating Unit (pre-LOU) that has been endorsed by the Regulatory Oversight Committee (ROC) of the global LEI system.